I mentioned in my post last week that I had been getting help and support from a writer’s group. I firmly believe in the importance of finding a group of people similar to you, but different enough to provide diverse opinions. I say it’s “my” group only in that I’m a member. No one person truly “owns” the group since it is a collaborative effort.Chance Meeting I actually had the benefit of finding this group on LinkedIn last fall. A fellow writer put the group together which consists of 5-10 writers. We connect via a Google Group and generally review one story each week. The make-up of the group has changed a bit over the past 6 months and it’s kind of nice to get different viewpoints from a variety of sources. One of the problems that I have with my stories is figuring out when they are “finished.” The last story that I gave to this group for their feedback was one that I couldn’t figure out a good ending for. Because it was my turn to submit a story, I had to give them something so I lopped off the last several paragraphs of my story, left it at a place where it could end, but with sort of a cliffhanger, and threw it out to the group.Crippling Fear! I’m often a bit hesitant to send out my writing. I have that fear that I think most writers face of being told that it’s terrible, that I should give up writing and stick with something I’m good at. But perhaps the real fear is that someone will tell me that it’s good. Every time I’m encouraged, it adds to my personal pressure to continue to writer great material. I suppose that should be a good thing. I have recently been reading from a great blog about writing called Positive Writer. If you want to be, or already are, a writer, I highly encourage you to check out his work. You will not be disappointed and it may help you get off your butt and start writing.Pleasantly Surprised Needless to say, much of the feedback I’ve received from my writing workshop group has been positive. Even when the other writers are not entirely thrilled with my writing, they offer their feedback in a constructive way and explain WHY a certain part of my story is not working for them. If I intended it the way they took it, I can leave it as it is. If not, it’s something I can look at changing for the better. When I initially joined the group, I thought back to my days in college when I took writing workshop classes. They were some of the most informative and enjoyable classes that I’ve ever taken and I have always wanted to find something like them for my writing. With this group I have found that place, and I am so thankful to everyone who participates in it with me.

So I looked back at the last post on this blog and realized that it was exactly six months ago. Someday I imagine myself looking back at the archives for this blog and wondering why there is a strange gap from November 2013 to May 2014. Then I remembered…FireFloodFamine Honestly, I don’t have a good reason for the gap. I could use the excuse of starting two new jobs last fall that take up the majority of my time and energy every week. I might exclaim that I have a family that misses me and I want to make sure that any spare second I have is one I get to spend with them. The list could go on and on, but I’m not going to make excuses. The simple fact is that I should have been writing and have not been. I have focused much of my spare energy (after “work” and family) on building my editing and résumé review business on Best Word Forward. I certainly urge you to check that out as there is some tie in to my writing, which is supposed to be the focus of this site. That being said, I decided recently that I couldn't forgo my “writing” anymore.﻿Finding a Support Group﻿I have also spent the past several months as part of a writer’s workshop group online. The great news about this is that is has provided me TONS of valuable feedback on my stories which will only serve to strengthen them moving forward. To that end, I have to finish (start) another story for that group so that I can have it ready for critique by the end of the month! Lastly, I have been doing a ton of other reading and absorbing information about leadership, entrepreneurship, writing, editing, learning…the list goes on and on. I venture to say that I have learned more in the past 6 months than at any other time in my life. I've learned about what sort of husband, father, son and friend I am and would like to be. I've learned so much about what I want to do with my life, what I want to be “when I grow up.” I continue to learn that I have so much more to learn. I’m not making any promises here in terms of how often I will post to this site. I don’t want to disappoint you, and I don’t want to disappoint me. The one promise I will make today is that it won’t be as long as six months before you hear from me again.

As the leaves make their yearly turn from green to yellow to orange and brown, football season is in full swing across the country. There are plenty of sordid headlines in the news these days about the negative side of football with Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito and discussions about concussions. Conversely, there are some great things about football and its traditions as well. I look back and recall growing up watching football just about every Sunday. We never really watched college games on Saturdays, but the family always made time to catch the Buffalo Bills play on Sunday afternoons. Often times I would plop down on the couch with my father and enjoy homemade French onion dip. I have to admit that my feelings on the Bills soured after their third Super Bowl loss in 1993 at Super Bowl XXVII. What I didn't realize at the time was that the feat of just getting to three championships in a row was an amazing accomplishment. Had I known then what I know now, I probably would have reacted much differently to that loss and appreciated the road the Bills had taken to get to the Super Bowl. Much to the chagrin of friends and family, I abandoned the Bills for the team that beat them in that game, the Dallas Cowboys. Over the years I have only grown to love that team more, but have also tempered my love so that it does not rise to fanatical levels. I may have uttered a few impolite words at certain times when they have not played their best, but again, age and experience has brought me some level of maturity. It is just a game after all. I have a short story to share regarding the Cowboys and how I passed along that tradition. As anyone who has read this blog in the past knows, my son Jackson was born in October of 2007 and passed away on November 26th. On November 29th, a Thursday, we held a wake for Jackson. Hundreds of people showed up to support our family in the loss. There was an amazing outpouring of love and support that evening and for weeks, months, and all the years since. However, the story tonight is not about that love, as beautiful and powerful and needed as it was. It just so happened that the night of that wake, the Dallas Cowboys were playing a football game against the Green Bay Packers. Even with my love for the Cowboys, I obviously had much more important things on my mind that evening and didn't even remember that the game was on until we arrived home from the wake. It had been an exhausting evening and we did not want to sleep, knowing that in the morning we would have to bury our son. In what likely was an effort to distract ourselves from everything going on around us, we flipped the TV on and happened to hear that the Cowboys had won the game that night. I was pleased that my team had won, but nothing could have dampened the pain of that day. The next thing is the real kicker though. When Jackson had passed, my reminded us that he was still with us, just like the stars are always there, even when they’re covered up by the clouds. From that moment on, we had (and still do) associated Jackson with stars. Anyone who has ever heard of the Cowboys knows that their logo is a giant blue and white star. As we saw the results of the game, my wife turned to me and said with a smile, “He was a Cowboys fan.” I like to think that the little star that we now had in heaven had wanted to bring a smile to our faces that night and managed to do just that, knowing that it was the hardest days and the time that we most needed some light in the darkness. Since that time, we have decorated our home with stars to remind ourselves on a daily basis of Jackson. I have maintained my love for the Cowboys and when my now 4-year-old son Joshua “stole” the Cowboys fleece from our bed a little over a year ago, I didn't complain. We still have yet to see if Jackson and Joshua’s little sister will follow in their footsteps as Cowboys fans, but regardless, we still cheer for the Bills now, and their running back, #22, Fred JACKSON!

Two little stories about books today. II was browsing around on the net yesterday and was reminded of the fact that I have two poems that are going to be published at the end of the year from the poetry contest I entered on LinkedIn over the summer. I found a copy of the previous year’s anthology on Amazon and looked through the “Look Inside This Book” pages to see what my writing will look like in print. It was an absolute thrill to see that and imagine my own work in a published volume very soon with copyrights and everything! I also came across a post on BuzzFeed this afternoon related to books and why they are better than eReaders. Don’t get me wrong, I didn't hate reading a book on my iPod Touch as much as I thought I would and actually did manage to finish one last month, but this post is absolutely right that there is something magical about holding a book. The smell, the feel, the weight of it; all are part of the experience and while I think we are absolutely moving to a more digital age in terms of publishing, I truly hope that there will always be a place in the world for physical books. If you have never had the opportunity to explore the bowels of a library (especially an old one) I highly recommend that you do as soon as possible. Go to the oldest university in your area and visit their library, ask at the front desk where “the stacks” are and follow the directions they give you to an entirely new world. You will be glad you did!

I am pretty sure that I have written before about shifting perspectives and how I look at things in different ways as I age, but I ask that you indulge me with that topic once again. I have written earlier this week on several topics that are difficult to nail down in terms of a specific definition. Beauty, love, heroism, and leadership are all things that we think we know about, but when asked to define them, the answer is more often than not that we will “know them when we see them.” I looked back at my own experiences in life and realized that I would have defined all of these things much differently 10 or 15 years ago than I do today and I owe that entirely to the things that I have seen and done. Long ago I would have listed physical attributes as the only thing that could denote beauty, but I know now that inner beauty is so much better. My thoughts on love haven’t changed too much over time, but have only strengthened. I am able to understand that I love more things and why I love them that I may have when I was younger. My heroes are certainly different today than they were in high school or even college and I understand today much more clearly what it truly means to be a hero. Finally, leadership has probably changed the most in my mind. As I wrote yesterday, leadership had long been about position in an organizational structure until my eyes were opened by leaders like John Maxwell. I now understand that leadership is much more than just being a “manager” or “supervisor” of people and that one can lead from any position. As you can see, my own personal thoughts about these different concepts have changed over the past several years. I urge you to think about what you have experienced that has led to changes in your thinking over time.

As I was hunting for something to write about this evening, I wanted to take a little bit of a departure from the happy go lucky topics I've been covering this week but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So the topic of the day is Leadership. If you had asked me three years ago what my definition of Leadership was, I would have given a much different answer than I would today. I owe much of this change in perspective to the chance to attend the first of three leadership conferences. Little did I know the morning that I walked into the event that my life was about the change for the better and I was going to start thinking about things in my life in a FAR different way.I've mentioned once or twice that the people who speak at the Chik-fil-A Leadercast each year are some of the best and brightest minds in business, sports, entertainment, and academia. They are all widely considered to be strong leaders in their fields and I feel like they genuinely want to help others to succeed as they have been able to succeed in life. From John Maxwell to Tim Tebow, from Condoleezza Rice to Coach K, the list of notable personalities goes on and on. Three years ago I sat and tried to absorb as much from the speakers as I possibly could, furiously taking notes along the way. The second time around I similarly took notes, but also tried to listen to everything that the speakers were saying. I made it a priority to sit down at my computer within the week following that second conference and type up synopses of each speaker based on my notes so that I could flesh out the ideas while they were still fresh in my head. I still look back on these notes on a regular basis today and continue to gain inspiration from them. I did the same after the conference earlier this year and hope that I am able to attend the conference next year as well. I strongly urge you to work with your employer, school, church group, etc. to set up a satellite viewing of this event. But what did this conference really do for my concept of leadership? Before I attended this conference, I was actually in a management position at my job and had been for almost four years, but I thought that was enough to make me a leader. Now I know how wrong I was. In the years since going to that first conference (2011) I have come to understand that true leadership can be performed at any level of an organization and getting a promotion to management doesn't immediately make you a good leader. As John Maxwell has written about time and time again, true leadership is the act of making others better. It is service to others; service that will enrich the lives of the people around us and lifting everyone up to be able to achieve more and better things. Think about the people in your life that you would call leaders. Perhaps it is a coach on your high school sports team or a pastor at church. These are likely two very different types of people and two very different types of leaders, but both can get the job done and help those around them. Managers at work can be leaders based on their position, but true leaders should be striving to bring everyone else up to and even beyond their own level. Take a look at your own thoughts on leaders and leadership. If you think like I did several years ago, I recommend seeking out some established leaders in your community or picking up some books by well known authors on the subject (John Maxwell, Andy Stanley, Jack Welch just to name a few) and read through some of their thoughts. You’ll be glad you did. More importantly, the people around you that benefit from your leadership will be glad too.

Yesterday I posted a link to an amazing video of a young man playing the piano while not being able to see what he was playing. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, stop now and go here! But to keep with the theme of the piano and music, I thought I would touch on my recently new found love of playing the piano by way of a little story. I started playing piano over 27 years ago at the age of four. The impetus for me learning the piano was that I told my parents that I wanted to play the drums after seeing the drums in a marching band at a local parade. They insisted that I learn the piano first and then move onto drums later. I objected and didn't quite understand the logic, but went along with it so that I could get to my drums.

Being the month of Halloween, it is the time where all of the classic horror movies are being shown on TV. Horror movies have never been my cup of tea though I have sat through some of the biggest classics. Along those same lines, I don’t think I would ever be able to write a horror story or novel. I’m not sure if there is a genre of horror poetry, but I might be able to crack that nut. I’m looking for some good reference material, so post your favorite horror film or book below.

I asked in a post back in August about the fascination of watching children. I realized the other day that observing children learn and grow is one of my favorite things to do in the whole world. Not only do children bring with them a level of innocence and curiosity, but the look on their faces when they figure something out on their own is amazing. Watching kids process problems in their minds and work through to an answer is so rewarding. This behavior in children is so inspiring to me and on a personal level it drives me every day to try and be better for my own children. There is talk in the media lately that the current generation of children in America may be the first even to not live as long as their parents and not necessarily be better off than their parents. I firmly believe that this is not the case and that our kids are smarter than we are and will make a better world, regardless of the card that they are dealt. Go out and find a child to inspire you today. Hopefully you already know one and don’t have to look too far…

These days, everyone writes something every day. From tweets, to Facebook statues, to emails, we are all typing away at a keyboard just about every day of our lives. But what are we really saying? I want to challenge everyone out there to make sure what you are writing really matters. If you are about to send out a banal tweet, stop and think twice about it. Before you post that latest Facebook status complaining about your hangnail…consider if it’s really going to matter another 30 seconds. If what you want to say truly is important, go ahead and hit send. But just think about it for a second first.